ABSTRACT - APPLIED SYSTEMS BIOLOGY CORE The main goal of the University of Michigan O?Brien Kidney Translational Core Center (MKTC) is to provide an effective translational research pipeline to develop novel, mechanistic treatment strategies for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The Primary Goal of the ASBC is to be the catalyst of this process by providing expert services for integrative data mining of genome wide renal data sets. The team of the ASBC has developed a unique set of tools and skills to serve as the bridge connecting the deep biological and clinical knowledge of the domain experts in the MKTC Research labs with the relevant segments in large-scale molecular and clinical data sets. Main Objectives of the ASBC: Empowering the renal community to employ genome scale information to: (a) Understand kidney development and injury in global molecular terms. (b) Define molecular markers of diagnosis and disease progression. (c) Identify critical pathways for therapeutic attack. (d) Define patient populations for targeted clinical trials. Specific Functions of the core will be to assist center investigators in integrating the rich genetic and molecular data sets in their focused, hypothesis driven research to target these studies to human disease associated mechanism. This will be implemented by a two-tiered approach: 1. Employ individualized search strategies using a suite of data mining tools. Interactive shared data-mining will be performed by a systems biologist?biomedical/clinician scientist research team using ad hoc or semi- structured work flows. 2. Employ standardized workflows for large-scale data sets of renal disease for semi-supervised data mining by experienced center investigators. Structured supervision of the interaction process will ensure optimal implementation of the cross-discipline data-mining interactions. The ASBC will serve as a bi-directional translational machine driving interactions between basic and clinical scientists towards the rapid discovery and implementation of novel insights and therapies for renal disease.